"Oh!" said I, feeling that a spot or two had suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. "That's nothing against her, is it?" "No, but I have no patience with second marriages." "Nor first ones, either," said Frank wickedly. "But seriously, Frank--would you like to have a wife so beautiful as Mrs. Rayne?" "Yes, if she had Rhoda's soul inside of her," said Frank stoutly. "I shouldn't." "Why not?" "Because all sorts of eyes gloat on her beauty and drink it in, and in one way appropriate it to themselves. Mr. Rayne is as proud of the admiration given to his wife as if it were a personal tribute to his own taste in selecting her. A beautiful woman never really and truly belongs to her husband unless he can keep a veil over her face, as the Turks do." "I knew you had 'views,'" said Mr. Rayne behind me, "but I had no idea they were so heathenish. What is New England coming to under the new rule? Are the plain women going to shut up all the handsome ones?" "I was only supposing a case." "Suppositions are dangerous. You first endure, then dally with them, and finally embrace them as established facts." "I was only saying that if I am a man when I come into the world next time (as the Hindoos say), I shall marry a plain woman with a charming disposition, and so, as it were, have my diamond all to myself by reason of its dull cover." "Jealousy, thy name is woman!" said Mr. Rayne. "When the Woman's Republic is set up, how I shall pity the handsome ones!" "They will all be banished to some desert island," said Frank. "And draw all men after them, as the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' did the rats," said Mr. Rayne. "What are you talking about?" said Mrs. Rayne, joining us at this point. "The pity of it," said her husband, "that beauty is only skin deep." "That is deep enough," said Mrs. Rayne. "Yes, if age and sickness and trouble did not make one shed it so soon," said I ungratefully. "Don't mention it," said Mrs. Rayne--"'tis bad enough when it comes. Do you remember that Greek woman in _Lothair,_ whose father was so fearfully rich that she seemed to be all crusted with precious stones?" "Perfectly." "To dance and sing was all she lived for, and Lothair must needs bring in the skeleton, as you did, by reminding her of the dolorous time when she would neither dance nor sing. You think she is crushed, to be sure, only Disraeli's characters never are crushed, any more than himself. 'Oh then,' she says, 'we will be part of the audience, and other people will dance and sing for us.' So beauty is always with us, though one person loses it." She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which made her pearls and velvet shimmer in the moonlight. She looked so white and cool and perfect, so apart from common clay, that all at once Queen Guinevere ceased to be my type of her, and I thought of "Lilith, first wife of Adam," as we see her in Rossetti's fanciful poem: Not a drop of her blood was human, But she was made like a soft, sweet woman.